A rabble rousing programmer who hates technology but loves people

August 28, 2004

Google - The End Of The Affair

Saturday, 28th August 2004. That's the day that Google died for me.

These are four of the things that have ended my love affair with Google:

1) Gmail

Louise kindly gave me a Gmail invitation and I was excited about seeing the Google take on an e-mail interface. When the screen appeared in my browser my heart sank. It was OK, but the first feeling it raised in me was confusion, there were too many buttons and too many options. I realised that I had much higher expectations for a Google provided mail interface and they had let me down.

2) My Google Pen

It doesn't work for left-handed people. I am used to having my left-handedness ignored by most companies, but I expected Google to have thought about all the little details concerning the use of their google pens. I didn't even think about the possibility that they may be selling a product with their name on it that wouldn't be designed to the highest possible standards. Google used to think about the little details.

3) The Search Results

If you search google for "hydrogen bomb diagram" a page from my blog will appear as the number one result.

And it's why, most of the time, the Google home page contains exactly 37 words. "We count bytes," says Google Fellow Urs Holzle, who is on leave from the University of California at Santa Barbara. "We count them because our users have modems, so it costs them to download our pages."

How much is it costing their users to download their Olympic Logos? I don't mind seeing the occasional new logo, but how soon will it be before we are getting 50 new logos a year?

So far in 2004 we have had 25 special logos.2003 - 18 special logos2002 - 26 special logos2001 - 18 special logos2000 - 16 special logos1999 - 7 special logos

Conclusion

Now don't get me wrong, Google is still really, really, really good, but it's just not as great as it was. What I am seeing is not the end of Google but it is the end of my love affair with Google.

Comments

Bwahahaha. I finally received a GMAIL invite. It's all hype! The interface sucks. It's not even superficially attractive. No body and no brains, just big clothes with room to grow. It's a great service if you plan to over-eat.

Oh, and it took me 15 tries until I found a username that wasn't already taken. That's the only novelty I could have hoped for, a decent username, if I'd gotten an invite sooner. Oh well. Enjoy your Gmail. I'm sticking with my Yahoo account for web use and my own domain for personal and business contacts.

Google search results are too often muddled with gateway links and other inappropriate pages designed to achieve a high Google rank. I find myself using alternate engines more and more. When I complain to Google, they give the stock response about reading and responding to most messages, but I rarely see a response, and even then, it's a canned response.

I never use Google for image searches anymore. Devil Finder is my new buddy.
http://www.devilfinder.com/